A well-known myrmecologist and founder of sociobiology, Edward O. Wilson, summarizes his 80-year experience of studying ants and tells us amazing stories about insects we usually don’t notice. Ants play a much larger role in shaping ecosystems than we can imagine. The total weight of all living ants is roughly equal to the weight of all people on Earth, and their numbers are about 10 quadrillion—so it’s anyone’s guess who truly is the master of our planet. Describing their habits and social lives, the author notes that ants are far from perfect by human moral standards: it’s a wholly female world, where the fate of males is unenviable; at the same time, they are very warlike, with flourishing slavery, parasitism, and even cannibalism. At the same time, their complex coordinated activities and the need to orient in space require developed intelligence and communication based on pheromones. The book describes the huge diversity of these insects, including species that live in symbiosis with plants, nomadic species that destroy everything in their path, ants that practice agriculture—“livestock farming” and growing fungi… E. O. Wilson includes many interesting facts from his own life and from the lives of other scientists, for example about searching for the “ant of the beginning of time.” The book is written with great love for nature; the author urges us to love and understand these “hardworking little ones” living side by side with us.